The BEST thing I’ve ever made (and cried about)
Until we got Emily, in 2018, the bakery was always “in-between” decorators. Emily was, honestly, the best cake artist we had. But every time we were in-between decorators, it was always me decorating these cakes. And I wasn’t the worst at it, but I was not at all, and still never will be, a natural artist. Every custom cake took me HOURS, and forget about fondant, what a nightmare for me. Art doesn’t come to me naturally, so I’m a tracer. I have to make a buttercream transfer (aka tracing a picture), then freeze it, then put it on the cake, and then basically trace it again. A natural artist just draws stuff on a cake with the same confidence I had for making perfect macarons the first time I ever made them.
But artists also tend to be dramatic and sometimes volatile, which in no way describes Emily, but it did describe the person who left right before I had to make an intricate cake.
I’m not a super emotional person. I’m someone who can make tough decisions with logic instead of emotion. In fact, I always joked to my sister that she got all the feelings in the family. As a kid, I rarely cried, and as a teen, I weighed every possible outcome and punishment before I engaged in anything my parents would deem “against the rules” in some way. So when it came time for punishment (my dad found out about absolutely everything) I usually just took the consequence, served the time (totally grounded), and moved on. Why protest the punishment when you did the crime?
But there are several things that make me very emotional, and two of them are children’s books. When I was a teacher, I would read Charlotte’s Web and The Giving Tree to my students every year. I taught K-8 at some point in my ten year teaching career, and I read these books to every grade. FYI, there is a never a dry eye (even with male 8th graders) when you read Charlotte’s Web aloud and get emotional when she dies. Those kids cry with you. What a lovely friendship.
However, they rarely understand your emotion when you read them The Giving Tree. A lot of children don’t understand that it’s a story about the relationship between a parent and child. The tree sacrifices everything for the child, giving him apples, and branches, and her trunk, as he needs them, until only the stump is left. And the child, now an old man, sits on the stump to rest. What a lovely parent. And what a terrible child who just takes until the end (I mean, it doesn’t really have a happy ending). But let’s focus on the sweet parent part.
So, when a bunch of adult children came to the bakery to get a The Giving Tree themed cake for their dad’s 75th birthday, I almost cried right there just talking to them about it. And I was happy to do it…. but oh the black icing, oh the intricately drawn leaves….oh the artistry that doesn’t look difficult to anyone but me. And I wanted this to be the cake they had hoped for, but I didn’t quite have the talent.
I had to make it after hours so that I could concentrate (and cry) every time I read the pages. And the buttercream transfer took FOREVER. Every time I applied it to the cake, all the black icing leaves would mush together. Was there a better way to make this theme? Probably. But I’m better at solving a crisis than drawing even a stick figure. I could make a plan in ten minutes and lead an army during the zombie apocalypse, with very few casualties, but art is not my thing. I got a B- in 6th grade in art class, thus ruining my perfect straight-A streak through all of elementary school. I argued with the art teacher about it (it’s a family trait, really, the arguing). “Not everyone can draw and paint, “I said, “but I showed up, and tried, and followed your directions. This is ART, it’s not like math with a definite answer.” She didn’t like that argument at all, she didn’t change it, and she’s been on my enemies list since I was 12.
Eventually, (3 hours after closing), I had finished the cake. Lots of cursing, exhaustion, freezing, scraping off icing, re-frosting the entire cake, and finally just calling it a day. Luckily, they loved it, and I hope Norm had a great birthday.
It is still a great memory for me, even the cake decorating part. Sometimes baking isn’t just flour, and frosting, and my terrible art. It’s memories, its family, and it’s everything someone once gave you and everything you hope to give back to them. But it was one of the last custom cakes I ever had to make, and I’m super grateful for that.
